The Love I Only Know With You
by ChaosChild92
Summary: "I couldn't imagine having nothing left of someone but a voice message. Think I'd never stop listening to it."  Which, it turns out, is Criminal Minds quote . This is FEMSLASH. If that's not your thing you can walk away now. No judgment will be passed.


**Title: **The Love I Only Know With You  
**Author: **Chaos  
**Beta: **None, tragically.  
**Pairings**: Quinn/Rachel.  
**Warnings: **Angst, alcohol consumption, character death.  
**Ratings: **M probably.  
**Spoiler Warnings: **None. Pretty much everything related to this takes place only inside my head. Except for the circumstances surrounding Quinn's offspring, those are here.  
**Disclaimer****: **Not at all mine. No money, no litigation. Title/cut lyrics are also from songs by the Wrights, so no litigation over those either.

**Summary:** "I couldn't imagine having nothing left of someone but a voice message. Think I'd never stop listening to it." (Which, it turns out, is Criminal Minds quote.)

**Author's Note: **Um. Not beta'ed. If anyone is willing to look over it for me I would be indebted to you.

I started writing this ages ago for a prompt over on the angst meme (which I lost and took forever to find again) and only just finished it recently. Enjoy!

* * *

The first night, after the police have left, she listens to it on repeat.

She can hear the others outside.

She can hear her dad's arguing about the best way to get through to her. Can hear Finn banging on the door with gargantuan fists and Noah debating window smashing as a viable method of entry. Then, as it gets later, she can hear Mercedes tear choked voice singing and Kurt's pale entreaties. But she ignores them.

She sits with her back ramrod straight, staring at the glowing screen of the laptop where she's uploaded the file, barely even blinking as the soft voice washes over the wounds in her heart like a never ending sea of salt water.

_Sweetheart it's me…_

She sleeps on the couch, too afraid to move from this relatively neutral space. She's not ready to face the bedroom, with Quinn's pyjamas still abandoned on the floor and her scent on the pillow.

She ventures out only once, her jeans creaking awkwardly as she tiptoes through the darkness.

She doesn't want to turn the lights on, doesn't want to disturb the house. Isn't ready to face the smiling portraits looking down from the walls.

The kitchen is cool and quiet and she stares at the bowl of pasta, plastic wrap still clinging as the meal goes cold again. Then she puts the untouched glass of water down on the bench and walks straight back to the living room.

_I'm not going to be home until late._

When she finally falls asleep the voice is sinking into her subconscious. Deeper and deeper. Until she has to concentrate to hear it.

She dreams of Quinn. Laughing and playing and singing. Screaming and bleeding and dying.

She wakes up with painful creases on her cheek, a sore neck and the message still playing in the background.

_This meeting looks like it might run until we all die of old age._

The funeral takes a long time to organise, especially when she's doing it all from her living room, kept company by the ghostly echoes of Quinn's last contact.

Though she doesn't want to she carefully dresses herself in neat black, pointedly ignoring Quinn's side of the closet.

She brushes her hair and stands, looking at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are too puffy and her nose, for the first time in her life, looks too big. Nothing seems to fit right and she can't get her hair to sit flat. She wants to give up and cry.

But she doesn't. Instead she goes back downstairs (feeling like she's walking through someone else's house) and opens the door.

They're all waiting for her there. They gather around and Finn takes one of her arms and Noah takes the other, walking her down the path like she's some ancient, matriarchal invalid.

She feels ancient. Sitting in the back of her father's car as they look at her with tender concern (they look so young from where she sits, at the end of millennia). She feels like she's already lived an eternity alone (centuries in just one night) and she can only see more of the same ahead.

_Don't bother waiting up_.

The funeral itself is a quiet affair.

Sue Sylvester sits at the back, looking shell-shocked, in a black tracksuit. Mr Schue comes and tells her how sorry he is in shining words.

Mercedes sits beside her, Kurt beyond that, and they're holding hands so tightly she wonders absently if everyone's knuckles are really so sharp.

_At this rate we might be here all night._

She gets up to deliver the eulogy and finds, for the first time in her life, that rather than brimming over with emotion she's choking on it. She opens her mouth and all that she manages is a croak and more tears.

Brittany is the first one to get up. Clear, sweet voice ringing out in the silence of the dead and the mourning.

Then Mercedes joins her. Then Kurt and Santana. Then Tina, Artie and the rest of the club, slowly wending their way through the assembled rows to her side. And she finds she can sing like this. Lets the music wash over her and through her. And though her voice is a little thready she makes it the whole way through the song before bursting into tears again.

_There's some pasta in the fridge. Only warm it up for a minute though, otherwise it'll go dry._

She only remembers bits of the wake.

Shelby showing up at the door with a little girl in tow, who looks so like the pictures on the mantelpiece that she locks herself in the bathroom until Santana threatens to break the door down and Kurt promises that they've gone.

Mrs Pillsbury looking perfect (like she's a china doll) and sad and clutching something black that might be a pamphlet, looking at her intensely from across the other side of the room.

Mike standing awkwardly beside her, holding a cupcake, which makes her unutterably miserable.

Matt pushing glass after glass of wine into her hands until she's left staring at the floor and wondering why it's spinning, why she's here at all.

Mercedes, Kurt and Tina guiding her up the stairs and slipping her into a bed that isn't hers and doesn't smell like Quinn.

_And don't forget to put the rubbish out._

She wakes up without a hangover and leaves, feeling like a ghost in a strange place. She calls a taxi from the curb and waits in the dawn light until it shows up.

The driver doesn't talk on the way home and she stares at the streets, trying not to think and feeling a little fuzzy on the whole notion of being.

_Alright_.

When she gets home the message is still playing, because she didn't have the heart to turn it off before she left.

_I'll see you when I get home._

She showers in the downstairs bathroom. With the generic soap and stiff, dusty towels. Afterwards she doesn't smell like herself anymore. Like who she is now (without Quinn) is different to who she was.

She moves quietly around the house, taking down pictures and gathering together clothes and dishes. Bundling up laundry and pillows and memories.

She methodically trashes all the food Quinn made that's still in the fridge and makes a big pile of her things on the dining room table.

Then she backs out, closing the door behind her.

_I love you._

She can almost see Quinn talking when she closes her eyes, although she has to concentrate to consciously be able to hear the words anymore.

She can see her smoothing out the lines of the jacket she was wearing as she glances over her shoulder to check that no one's listening in. The flick of blonde hair in the light of the setting sun and the smile, the crinkle of Quinn's eyes on the last words.

She mouths along with her.

_Alright. Bye._


End file.
